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Hipsters suck.

They walk like the sidewalk’s a runway, and speak like no one else knows what they’re talking about. Your seemingly typical generational, conforming non-conformists, hipsters don leather belts on jeans already too small for them, and wear turquoise-shell Ray-Bans that annoyingly nuzzle their thick heads. Scrutinize or glorify their style as either a fad or a movement — hipsters are everywhere as they occupy the bike lanes and sidewalks of urban sprawls like that of the Bay Area.

Breeding in cities like Oakland and San Francisco (where they can afford their liberally self-righteous lifestyles), hipsters are part of a phenomenon as organic as the dining hall’s salad bar. Like produce that used to have a market only wealthy and food-conscious folks could afford, the hipster swag has begun to seem more like a brand as the elegantly disheveled shelter Apple products in their Chrome messenger bags.

If you just scoffed or gagged a little, I get it. Nothing used to make me cringe more than talking about “hipsters” among desperate claims of not being one, in spite of the relish irony often brings. Parts bouge-y, bohemian and “stuff white people like,” hipsters echo pretense and hype. Stuck in the purgatory of consumer-based identity, the paradoxical hipster drinks or serves deliciously over-priced coffee in ghetto superstar rising areas like West Oakland; They present themselves heavy with the guilt of life-sucking trendiness, and repent with sustainable diets and do-it-yourself budgets.

Though only a fraction of the population embodies the variable hipster (taking note of septum piercings + handlebar mustaches per urban dweller might make a good sample), no other runway stands out as much. Hipsters aren’t just self-righteous nerds or stylish baristas who have nothing else to contribute to society but post-post-post-modernism and burnt coffee. Hipsters are today’s flappers and beatniks, attaching pop-social justice, digitalized art and progressive self-destruction to their iPods, bicycles and patchwork cardigans.

As one-dimensional labels represent exclusivity rather than community, the paradox of being a hipster is not something you can buy at Urban Outfitters. Whether you’re in, out or safely ironic, be aware of the hipster spectrum that ranges from a low of desperation to a high of condescension, as their presence reminds us that Hollywood and McDonald’s are not the only defining elements of American culture.

Developing diversity with another wave of consumerism, the likes of vegan restaurants paired with trendy thrift stores have ironically led to the increase of housing prices in pockets of the Bay Area, driving lower-income residents away. The Mission district of San Francisco is one of many neighborhoods that is changing to accommodate so-called “hipsterfication.” Hipsters aren’t just the credit-whores of rich parents, but self-sufficient pimps establishing another socioeconomic class. Duly an American development, does the hipster stem from this country’s colonial roots?

Academically the phenomenon of gentrification, insurance-backed and temp working hipsters alike are taking over every nook and cranny they can afford without getting shot in a drive-by. You’ll see a health supermarket or two in the midst of Oakland’s liquor stores, and dimly lit jazz bars among the Tenderloin’s poppin’ streets. Though the fashion-friendly hipster may not yet be your imaginary Oakland resident, our neighboring city’s development is a reflection of the hipster culture’s growing legitimacy in society.

It’s nothing new, this reality of being poor and rich at the same time, a spectacle of being a well-dressed, self-proclaimed rebel and a mindless drone altogether. Owning a Macbook while paying for a phone without a web connection, shopping at the Salvation Army with a platinum credit card, drinking cans of PBR after swilling five different kinds of whiskey in an evening of repose. The hipster culture could be just another part of consumerism that we love to hate, or another lifestyle that we might try to emulate.

We may lazily mock them with beanies and flannel shirts at costume parties, and glare when their vapid gazes and slouching backs counteract our hurried walks and caffeinated grins. But what does that even mean? Their deadpan demeanor seems to make such an effort to piss us off. Cop-outs, posers, losers and burn-outs, they perch at BART stations and bus stops in clouds of smoke so thick that they can’t even see what’s going on around them. Hipsters suck worse than their imported beer and organic cigarettes, and they don’t really care.

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